EDITORIAL: Raises for Connecticut judges ill-timed

The state's 201 judges have not had a pay raise since 2007. Given the responsibilities of their job, they deserve one. But, the timing isn't right for the request for higher pay that Connecticut Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers has made to the legislature.

Rogers wants a raise of 11 percent next year, followed by 5.5 percent increases in each of the next three years.

Superior Court judges' pay would increase from $146,780 to about $192,000. Associate Supreme Court justices' pay would go from $162,500 to $212,000.

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The pay adjustment in the first year would cost about $3.8 million.

Rogers would have a better case if the state were flush with money. It isn't. The legislature's Office of Fiscal Analysis projects the state's General Fund budget for the year is already $60.1 million in the red. The state's unionized workers are in the second year of a pay freeze.

The president and executive vice president of the Board of Regents for Higher Education just resigned after it was discovered that large, unauthorized pay increases were handed out to top education administrators.

Rogers can argue that the pay raises are needed to retain judges who could make more in private practice.

Her case would be helped if she could show a large number of judges have quit because of low pay.

But, they haven't. The fact is that as public servants, judges are always going to make less than the best trial and corporate lawyers.

Of the more than 7,000 lawyers in Connecticut, half make less than $145,960 a year, half make more, according to 2011 Bureau of Labor Statistics figures.

To the half making less than $145,960, a judge's salary is still a big step up.

Superior Court judges have the 14th-highest pay among judges in the country. But given the state's high cost of living, there is a good argument that it should be higher -- just not this year.

A lot of workers have seen their wages stagnate. In better times, they will, hopefully, rise again.